


treat me like a comma and i'll take you to a new phrase

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chance Meetings, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Law School, One Night Stands, Parental Expectations or lack thereof, Pre-Canon, Spring Break, and their crushing weight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:31:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17238317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: Everyone knows that lending a book is the best way to form a connection; however, exemptions ought to be made for overachieving law students.Pre-Canon AU. Rebecca and Nathaniel encounter each other during spring break.





	treat me like a comma and i'll take you to a new phrase

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this fic is a lyric from Waste It On Me. Amusingly, it is one of the lyrics that our beloved Vincent Rodriguez III lip-syncs to in the video. Go check it out!

Nathaniel’s original plan for spring break meant joining his parents in the Hamptons, where he would help host their gatherings, renew old acquaintanceships, and play the attentive guest in the homes of his father’s associates.

And at first, he had done exactly that.

By Wednesday, however, Nathaniel decided that it was time to begin his prep work for the final stretch of the semester. Which, regrettably, meant taking leave of his parents early and departing for New Haven.

It was a logical decision, especially when the extensive resources of Yale were taken into consideration. He already had a place to stay: the center forward from his water polo days has been pestering Nathaniel to visit. Why waste such an opportunity? Not only would he be able to get a head start in studying and acing those crucial exams to cushion his first-year GPA, but he would still be building connections with the right kind of people. People his father didn’t know. And he could book his ticket to San Francisco straight from the local airport. No need to make the car trip twice.

Yes, it was sudden, but his reasoning was sound, and the arrangements could be made efficiently. Given Plimpton Sr’s comments over the last few days, Nathaniel doubted his father would have any objections. Not when Nathaniel was taking direction and initiative for his academic career.

Of course, it was a shame to cut their visit short, but law school was his priority, and he would do what needed to be done.

Anything to be the best.

Right?

Right.

~

Adam Giovanni is the perfect host to crash with. Easygoing, doesn’t ask questions, and generally has a social calendar so full of events that he doesn’t take offense when Nathaniel wants to do his own thing. So the morning after Nathaniel steps out of his cab, after they have gone on an early morning workout and caught up sufficiently with the events of each other’s lives, Nathaniel easily excuses himself for the afternoon, taking the spare key and heading out to the campus.

Even for spring break, Nathaniel finds the library to be surprisingly empty; even the gunners of New Haven are taking their time off.

Despite this fact, a short girl with curly hair nearly slams into him like a tiny tornado as he makes his way through the shelves; he feints left and she pirouettes, a short stack of books clutched tightly to her chest, and thus they miss collision. It doesn’t seem to slow her down, even her apology is given quickly and over her shoulder as she heads determinedly to her destination. Nathaniel shrugs it off and continues to the Reader Room and its promisingly open tables.

The first few hours go by smoothly enough. Nathaniel settles into the rhythm of notetaking and backdating references and the steady scratch of his pen is almost soothing in the quiet. No one else walks by to break his concentration. It is almost relaxing.

Trouble comes when one of the books he needs turns out to be reserve-only. He gets up anyways, figuring that it would not take too much effort to persuade the assistant at the desk to let him look at it for a short while, and he has Adam’s information if he needs it. But when he gets there, it’s unavailable.

“Someone just checked it out,” says the girl at the desk apologetically.

There’s a three-hour window for which the book can be kept, and Nathaniel thanks her for her help and backtracks through the room, figuring that it might be worth a shot to see if he can find the patron and ask them directly for access.

The culprit, unexpectedly enough, is the same girl who nearly barreled into him earlier. She sits only two tables down from him. She’s deep in her own world: earbuds in, notes spread around her and a teetering stack of texts at her elbow. She has dark circles under her eyes and her fingers press hard against her temples, and he can’t help but feel a little bad before he raps his knuckles against the table’s surface to get her attention. The vibration has her jump in her seat, startling out of her reverie, and she twists and looks up to face him properly.  

He gives a short wave. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she says, scowling deeply, yanking out one of her earbuds; the back of his neck prickles uncomfortably.

He points to the title at the top of her book tower. “How long are you going to need this?”

“Not sure,” she says warily. “What’s it to you?”

“Could I borrow it from you before you return it?”

“Hm?” The girl doesn’t look impressed, but she’s also not-too-subtly checking him out, her gaze dropping as thought she’s checking him over for unexpected bits, like he’s a car she might want to test drive. It doesn’t particularly bother him.

“It won’t take long,” he says, smiling, trying to keep his body language open and easygoing ~~—~~ slips back into that particular brand of charming he has been using all week, the kind that works so well on his father’s friends and their wives – slips back into it as easy as anything. “I’m sitting just over there.” He gestures back towards his own table. “I’ll bring it back the second I’m done with it. Does that sound like a good deal?”

Her eyebrows draw down even more sharply over her forehead.

“So what? I’m supposed to just stick around? Wait your turn.”

“See, I would, but I’m not a student here,” says Nathaniel. “Today would be nice.”

“That’s not my problem. What if I have something better to do?”

She clearly doesn’t have anything better to do, not if she’s in the library on a Friday afternoon, but he doubts voicing that sentiment will do him any favors. “How long do you think you’ll need it for?”

“I don’t know yet, but having some tall, entitled number hovering around waiting for me to sneeze isn’t going to make me finish the job faster. What kind of flimfammer are you?”

Nathaniel doesn’t miss a beat.

“I’m sorry, I speak English, not old-timey detective.” He taps at his ear. “Was that a yes or a no?”

Her eyes are still narrowed, like she expects him to steal her lunch money, but for a second her lips tilt up into a reluctant smile. But then the line of her mouth firms again and she juts her chin straight out at him.

Plimptons know how to get what they want; they also know when to pick their battles, and something about the firm set of her mouth tells him that picking this one would be a grave error—it would be far more sensible to retreat and formulate a new strategy instead.

He holds up his hands in mock surrender, fingers spread wide.

“You know what, forget it. Sorry to bother you.”

The sting of missing his mark aside, Nathaniel can’t help but be a little amused as he returns to his table. It only proves his private conviction, already fostered by Adam, that Yalies are just a really weird group.

~

Nathaniel is halfway through _Hawkins vs McGee_ when a sudden flicker at his periphery breaks his concentration.

He looks up to find the girl is standing at the other side of his table, the contested book in her hands, staring at him. Without breaking eye contact, she drops the tome right at the center of the table–it lands with a thud that echoes through the room.

“I finished early; you have one hour and then I’m taking it back,” she informs him abruptly, before turning on her heel and walking quickly away. Bewildered, He stares after her as she settles back in her seat, before giving a mental shrug and pulling the book in front of him.

_Well, if she insists…_

He works quickly through his notes, keeping his focus, though from time to time he thinks he sees her looking over at him through his peripheral vision.

He drops the book back off on her desk on his way to the reference section; she barely acknowledges his presence and by the time he heads back to his seat, all traces of her presence are gone, save the haphazard stack of texts still teetering at the edge of the table.

Out of sheer curiosity, Nathaniel pauses to glance through the titles, to see if any of the books she had been perusing might also be of use to him. Instead, his eye is drawn to the black marbled corner of a composition notebook, just sticking out at the bottom of the pile. He jimmies it out and flicks through it, only to find it nearly full and written in a tight, close scribble that is actively incomprehensible: he can’t tell if it’s shorthand, an individual code, or just really bad handwriting.

At least her phone number is clear enough, jotted on the inside cover beneath the scribble he presumes is her name. Nathaniel pulls out his own phone and composes a quick text before returning to his own spot, with the intent of studying while he waits for her return. When the minutes tick with no signs of her or any indication that the text was even read, Nathaniel tries to call directly. He is immediately connected to a tinny, automated response that informs him that the user has not yet set up their voicemail.

A little annoyed now, Nathaniel heads to the front desk with the intent of leaving the notebook with someone who actually has access to a student directory. He waits for what feels like an absurdly long time, as the clock ticks closer to the time that he’s supposed to leave to meet up with Adam for the evening, a hot prickle of foolishness rising under the collar of his t-shirt, irritably wondering if it is worth it. He could leave the notebook right where he found it, he supposes, but then there is no telling whether it will actually make it back to her or not.

“Not my problem,” he mutters, shoving the notebook in his bag, and resolves to come back tomorrow, when there is someone who can take it off his hands.

~

Nathaniel goes to meet Adam at the bar just a few short blocks from his apartment. Adam introduces him to his group of friends—no one that Nathaniel has met before, but all cut from the same cloth: guys with Ivy League undergraduate degrees and long pedigrees and diligent participants in the sports circuit. Nathaniel makes nice—he’s good at making nice, especially when these connections will come in handy later—but the conversation tracks are predictable enough that he follows them without really paying much attention. The bar is dark and loud, crammed with students having a last hurrah, and it might not be Stanford, but it is enough distance from the conscientious conversation and timed pauses and the ever-present necessity of clocking his father’s reactions that Nathaniel can nearly relax.

His casual scan of the room during a particularly easy lull is brought to an abrupt halt when his gaze slides across a very familiar face sitting at the end of the bar. She’s not looking at him, but he knows her immediately even in profile: same curly hair, same earbuds, same scowl of concentration.

Nathaniel excuses himself from the table by volunteering to buy the next round. As he leaves the table, he can hear Adam from behind him say, very distinctly, “Bet Plimpton’s on the prowl.”

If they were still in undergrad, Nathaniel would have no trouble flipping him off. As it is, he makes a point of turning around so that Adam can see his eyeroll.

He goes up right to the empty spot next to her and gives his order to the bartender. He can already feel her eyes on him before he turns to face her.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” she says, a little cautiously, pulling out both earbuds this time.

The next thing he notices is that she still has notes open in front of her, despite the change in venue, and instead of a good quip his first words to her are the obvious question instead:

“Studying in a bar? Really?”

“Multitasking, actually,” she says, leaning her elbows against the counter. “If I’m going to be bothered by conventionally attractive gentlemen about my choice of reading material, I might as well be someplace where I won’t catch hell for drowning my sorrows at the same time.”

“Ah. Logical.”

“I like to think so,” she says, with a wry twist of the lips. She jerks her head over to the table he just vacated. “You look like you’re done for the day. Did the book help?”

“It did, actually. I wanted to thank you properly, but also—”

She cuts him off with a quick shake of the head.

“No need to do that,” she says, with a dismissive wave. “I work fast, I’m super-efficient actually, but sometimes it isn’t that easy to tell how much longer it will take when you’ve been staring at the same case for hours on end. I didn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t keep. Also, you read it—the author is just _eugh_.”

She looks so appropriately regretful that Nathaniel can’t help but give a small huff of laughter. “I get that.”

“What’s your name?”

“Nathaniel. Anyways, I—”

“Oh, that’s not too bad. Last name?”

He frowns at her, but answers anyways, “Plimpton.”

Her eyebrows shoot straight up her head. “That’s actually your last name?”

Why does she sound so judgmental?

“Uh, yeah?”

“Seriously?” she says, her gaze slipping down his body and back up to meet his eyes. “Interesting.”

“Interesting, huh?” The bartender sets his drinks on the bar. He passes over his card but doesn’t move to leave, leaning against the counter as that she turns and faces him fully.

“ _Nathaniel Plimpton_ ,” She pronounces his name like she’s trying for a posh accent, but it’s getting strangled by Cockney halfway through. “That’s a mouthful. Do the guys call you Nate? Nate the Great?”

“Ew, no.” He shudders.

“No one has shortened it?”

“A couple of people called me Nat—”

“Eugh.” Her face scrunches up in distaste.

“…but I’m not exactly attached to it,” Nathaniel finishes, frowning, a little piqued. “It’s not _that_ bad.”

“It is definitely objectively bad.” She takes another sip of her drink – he can see from the carbonation that it’s just cola, not alcohol, so nothing about her behavior is lowered inhibitions. Apparently, she’s just like this.

“Very funny,” he says, leaning forward. “What about you?”

“What?” She turns her head to the side and taps her ear; it’s getting louder at their corner of the bar, as students crowd themselves further in.

“What’s your name?” he asks, shifting closer, leaning further in so that she can hear him better.

“Rebecca Nora Bunch,” she says promptly, like she’s about to make an argument in front of a panel instead of introducing herself to some guy at a bar; she even offers her hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“And you,” he says, with a slight nod of the head, reaching out to grasp her hand and enveloping it completely with his. His fingers sting a little as he draws away. Rebecca blinks quickly, then tilts her head, considering him.

“So, you don’t go here. Where are you visiting from? Princeton?”

Somehow, she manages to pronounce it like an insult.

Nathaniel narrows his eyes at her. “I go to school in Palo Alto, actually.”

She nods slowly, as though processing, and he can’t tell if the fact he’s a Stanford man instead is having any effect on his standing or ranking or whatever is going through her head.

“You flew out from California for books in Connecticut? Wow.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that’s totally why I’m here.”

“I mean, unless you give me a reason, I’m going to just have to make one up for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. You probably wouldn’t like it, though, so you might as well tell me.”

His own laughter at such a matter-of-fact-yet-absurd answer surprises him, as does Rebecca’s delighted answering smile as it spreads across her face and lights up her eyes.

“If you must know,” he says. “This is more of a detour for me; I was in the Hamptons earlier this week.”

Rebecca arches a eyebrow at him. “How fancy of you.”

“Hm. How about you?”

She blinks. “What about me?”

He shrugs. “It’s almost the end of spring break; did you just come back from somewhere?”

“No.” Rebecca’s gaze doesn’t waver, but she shifts back on her bar stool, her shoulders curling in a little defensively. “I’ve been here all week.”

“Yeah?”

“What, like it’s weird? You say that like it’s weird. I just needed to study. Hell, you were studying. And when aren’t law students studying, anyways?”

 “Fair.” Belatedly, he remembers the notebook stuffed at the bottom of his bag, still back at the table, that she has distracted him from returning.

“Speaking of—”

“Though if you’re running with _that_ crowd,” she juts her chin in the direction of Adam’s table, “You’re not gonna get all that much studying done anyways, if you were planning on it.”

Her disdain now is a little less playful, tweaking painfully at some internal chord, previously relaxed, that brings his shoulders back, his back muscles tensing, wary again.

“And what kind of crowd are they?” he challenges.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Come on, I’m not trying to insult you; I’m just saying that I know those guys, and they might look good, but they don’t have anything to show for it; absolutely no accomplishments of their own to speak of.”

“Ouch,” says Nathaniel. “That’s an indictment.”

She shrugs. “I’m familiar with the type.”

Her bitterness doesn’t seem to be directed at him, but it still stings. He’s always had to prove himself—that he wouldn’t be here otherwise if that wasn’t true. And as for the others, well, Adam isn’t the best student, but he’s harmless enough, and the rest of them are probably of the same ilk.

There’s a quippy rejoinder on the tip of his tongue, a good one, and it is immediately lost by Adam’s voice cutting clean through the general murmur at the bar—

“Hey, Plimpton! _Captain_. Dude, what’s taking so long?”

He manages to keep his wince internal (Adam is just too loud, sometimes), but Rebecca is less subtle; she looks to him with eyebrows raised, features cast in under disbelief as if to say _really, you let people call you_ that _–_ the condescension is such that it utterly kills his desire to keep their conversation going, notebook returned or not.

“I need to get going.” He ignores the hot flush at the back of his neck and gathers up their drinks, pausing only to flash her a cool smile. “Good to see you again.”

“Same to you,” Rebecca says, drawing back, and the next time he looks around as he eases back through the crowd she’s curled over in her book, head in her hands.

~

“Dude, what took you so long?” Adam asks him when he finally makes it back through the crowd to their table. “Did you strike out?”

Nathaniel scoffs and considers taking a swipe at Adam—even the idea that he was considering such a thing is preposterous—but restrains himself.

“Don’t even joke about it,” he orders, taking his seat, jostling Chad-no-wait-it’s-Thad in the process. “No, that girl I was telling you about? From the library? She was at the bar. We talked.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Rebecca Bunch. Do you know her?” Nathaniel gestures back behind him, mindful not to jostle any of the bodies crowded around the standing tables behind him.

Adam cranes his neck to see the bar, and his eyebrows shoot up high across his forehead.

“Rebecca? Yeah, definitely. Rebecca Bunch: freaky smart, keeps to herself, makes the best points in class. She’s funny.”

“Oh?”

“Well, she makes these puns but that’s not actually what I mean. She had perfect attendance for like, the first couple of months, then _boom_ , up and disappeared for a few weeks, no one knew where and why, but then she was back like nothing ever happened and _still_ aces her midterms and keeps her place at the top of the class. She’s weird. Also, she’s totally looking at you, dude.”

That explains why the back of his neck keeps prickling; Nathaniel resists the urge to look around and see if Adam’s telling the truth. “Whatever. Anyways, what did I miss?”

~

He can’t keep his focus.

It’s not the conversation –again, it’s just one of dozens of conversations he’s had before, volleying between inane and sharp and back again, he could follow this kind of conversation drunk off his ass—but the back of his neck hasn’t stopped prickling, reminding him that Rebecca’s notes are in his bag, that she is still at the bar, and the pettiness that kept him from just handing them over earlier is now being replaced by a kind of itching, seeping guilt making its home right under his skin.

He has no idea where this feeling is coming from so strongly, why it is pushing between his shoulder blades, trying to march him right back to the bar. Usually, he can shake off such impractical feelings, just pretend that his father wouldn’t approve and that he’s got better things to do. But not this time.

He has a sneaking feeling that he recognized that look on her face, before she’d caught sight of him. That sheer exhaustion. It’s one he’s been trying to resist all week.

When the others finally decide it is time to head out for their next stop, Nathaniel hangs back.

“I might just head back to the apartment,” he tells Adam, ignoring his knowing look. “I still need to flesh out a couple more outlines for Monday.”

He waits until they have rounded the corner before doubling back inside.

Rebecca looks up when he approaches and immediately flushes red. As much as he would like to flatter himself that it is from reasons beyond irritation, it is probably just irritation.

“What do you want?” she demands.

Rather than waste time speaking, Nathaniel pulls her battered notebook out of his bag and holds it out to her, extending it like a peace offering.

Her change in demeanor is immediate.

“Oh _thank god_ ,” she breathes, snatching at it, her nails scratching his knuckles in her haste to have the book physically in her hands against. He rubs at the faint pink streaks, grimacing, as she thumbs through the pages. Apparently satisfied that he hasn’t defaced the notebook in any way, she flops down heavily in her seat.

“You didn’t answer my text, and I couldn’t leave a message. You should set up your voicemail.”

“You sound like my mother.” But then her face softens. “Seriously though, _thank you_. I really didn’t want to have to redo these.”

Nathaniel gives a small, awkward nod in acknowledgement. “Sorry it took so long; I’ll let you get back to it.”

He turns, only to be stopped by a surprisingly firm grip on his elbow. He looks down at her small fingers curled in the crook of his arm, following the line of her arm up to her abashed face. She snatches her hand back, rubbing her fingers together like she burned them.

“Where are you going?” she blurts out.

“I have some things I need to take care of.”

“Hot party?”

“No. More stuff like that, actually.” He nods at her notebook. “My friend went out, so I’m going to head back to his place.”

“Which one?”

“Hm?”

“Of the guys you were hanging out with earlier. Which one was your friend?”

“Adam Giovanni,” he says, caught off-guard by her sudden interest, after she so clearly denounced them just a couple hours before.

“Oh, _him._ ” Rebecca says, the pronoun loaded with amused vexation, probably more than Adam deserves, and yet Nathaniel can’t help grin in response.

“Yeah, him.”

“He’s kind of a dunce.” She twirls her straw and tilts her head in contemplation, whether of the bubbles or Adam’s character is unclear. “Then again, being a dunce isn’t exactly a federal offense. And of the guys you were with, he’s not the worst.”

He acknowledges her pseudo-apology with a slight smile.

Now that the notebook isn’t weighing on his conscience or in his bag, there’s a pleasant stillness between them, despite the bodies and other conversations crowding in on all side.

Rebecca moves first, pulling her backpack off the stool next to her.

“You should have a drink before you go.”

He quirks an eyebrow at her. “I thought you were studying?”

She shrugs. “I mean, it is Friday night. Before we go off and be lame in our separate directions, why don’t we be a little normal? It’ll even be on me. Consider it a thank you for the notebook.”

He should say no. He did his duty and returned the notebook, that ‘lame’ comment kind of prickles, she’s totally not his type—

“Just one drink,” he says instead, and is gratified by the much warmer smile she gifts him with as he slides into the offered seat. “And it’s only fair to warn you, but I don’t do small talk.”

“That isn’t a problem for me; I’m great at breaking the ice,” says Rebecca, flagging down the bartender to place their drink order. “I know all the games.”

“I don’t like games.”

“See? I’m learning things about you already. But also: you’re lying.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” She looks back at him with a crooked smile. “You clearly like at least one: Adam called you ‘captain’, right? Captain of what?”

“Water polo. We were on the same team—what?” Rebecca is pulling a face like she smelled something particularly vile, eyes squeezed tightly closed and her mouth in a pinched line. “What’s wrong with water polo?”

“Only that it is the snobbiest sport you could possibly be a part of. And yet I can see it, so that’s kind of disappointing.”

He scowls at her. “What’s your vendetta? An ex-boyfriend or something?”

“Wow, way to assign my personal disinterest to having been spurned by a man. How patriarchal.” Before he can object that no, that is not what he meant, she continues, “It’s the bonnets. I can’t take them seriously.

“Hey, those are important.”

“I guess. You need something to protect your fluffy hair,” she says, and startles him by reaching up to ruffle the crest of it –he dodges, batting her hand away, his fingers stinging again at the unexpected contact.

“I am not fluffy,” he says, trying to be indignant, trying not to laugh and failing on both counts despite himself.

“It’s pretty fluffy,” she insists, triumphant.

“All right, if we’re going to do this, is it my turn?”

She opens her hands in a _be my guest_ sort of gesture.

“What’s in that notebook? Those don’t look like just case outlines, from what I could read.”

Her eyebrows go up. “You read it?”

“I was trying to find some way to contact you,” he defends. “Not that I could find anything useful.”

“Is that an insult against my handwriting?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“Good,” she says, weirdly pleased. “I don’t need to be comprehensible for this one: these are my practice notes for the bluebook exam,” she says, elaborating when he shoots her a confused look. “I’m going to be Editor-in-Chief at the law journal, so I need to be studying up.”

“What?” He squints at her. “Aren’t you a first year, too?”

“I mean I will be the Editor-in-Chief,” she amends. “Eventually. First step is to actually get an editor position. I’m up for a slot right now, and part of our requirements is a bluebook exam –that’s our style guide –so I’ve been studying and practicing and doing a lot of annotations.”

“Ambitious,” he says, impressed.

“What, like it’s hard?” she asks with an exaggerated valley girl lilt and a toss of the head that catches him off guard and leaves him blinking. She flushes under his confused stare and elaborates, “ _Legally Blonde_ —I’m referencing _Legally Blonde_.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been listening to the musical all day.” She wiggles her earphones for further emphasis. “It’s not perfect, but it’s comforting. Did you know it was a musical?”

“I did, actually.”

Nathaniel thinks that surprise looks good on Rebecca, with her widening eyes and the gently-formed ‘o’ her mouth makes.

“Wait, really?” she asks, suspicious, like she expects him to be pulling her leg.

Nathaniel sighs.

“I had a weird musical theater roommate in undergrad,” he explains. “He liked to keep up with recent Broadway shows and he’d play them in our room. He used to put on that lawyer song to mess with me. You know the one?”

“’Blood in the Water’?” She prompts, starting to grin.

“The shark one? Yeah, that sounds right. It used to drive me crazy.”

“Yeah,” she snickers. “That’s actually pretty appropriate. Fun fact, did you know the book was actually set in Stanford first, before they course-corrected and moved the setting to Harvard?”

“I didn’t even know there was a book. That’s a lame change to make for absolutely no reason.”

“Oh, you want reasons, I have plenty.”

Nathaniel raises his eyebrows at the sudden energy that has her sitting up and leaning closer, invading his personal space. He holds up his hands in surrender, though not so high that he actually wards her off.

“No need. I’m not trying to insult your favorite musical here.”

Rebecca laughs and eases back into her seat. “It’s not my favorite musical, don’t worry about that. I like _In the Heights_ way better, though it definitely isn’t fair to compare them. But Nina’s solo is really good for when I’m freaking out about exams. Do you know that one?” she asks, watching him closely.

He shakes his head.

“Well, too bad. You probably should though. Fun fact: that character also went to Stanford.”

“We have better representation in musical theater than I thought,” says Nathaniel dryly.

“Mhm-hm.”

The bartender sets their drinks in front of them.

“Well, to good work,” she says, offering her glass up.

“To good work.” He clinks it with his own.

~

Nathaniel is able to stick to his one-drink promise; it just happens that a drink lasts for a long time when you can’t stop talking.

Rebecca is _interesting;_ she did her undergrad at Harvard (she drops that bombshell five minutes into the conversation and he’s actually impressed it took that long), edited the _Crimson_ and still counsels current members, she is up to date on current affairs, and she knows her shit. They’ve covered a lot of ground and he doubts they are going to run out any time soon.

She also likes to be interested, he can tell by how she leans forward on her stool towards him whenever he’s talking, eyes not wide but intent in their focus. He notices when her attention falters, when he moves to shake out his wrist or hooks his fingers under his collar to give himself a little more air.

His cataloguing of her reactions is entirely dispassionate; it’s not a flirtation, not laying the foundation for a hookup, but even though she’s not his type, it’s easy to check her tells, how she talks with her hands, and how her hair bobs when she’s nodding. She likes to punctuate her stories with grand gestures – sometimes so grand he worries she’ll knock one of the taps funny. But she always pulls back just in time; clearly, she has better spatial sense than he originally gave her credit for.

Rebecca pushes her half-full glass away and pops another pretzel into her mouth. “Okay, I’ve got a serious question for you now.”

“Hey, it’s my turn,” he objects, not wanting to lose the opportunity to challenge her assertion that _Wings_ is the worst spin-off in the _Cheers_ verse.

She wags her finger at him. “Not for serious questions. Come on, answer me this: what was a reasonably attractive young man like yourself doing in another school’s library on a Friday afternoon? Like, we are all dying a little on the inside, like I get it, but that is unhealthy even by law school standards. That is, like, Hermione-Granger-studying-for-OWLs levels of swottiness.”

He tips his glass at her in salute. “Thank you.”

“It’s not a compliment.”

“You say that, but I’ll take it as one.”

“I knew it!” she crows, throwing out her arm and nearly poking him in the eye. “You are totally a fan.”

“I am _not,_ ” he protests, leaning back and grabbing on the counter to keep himself balanced while avoiding her finger. “It was an international phenomenon –it’s impossible to miss that reference.”

“I don’t believe you,” she sing-songs.

“Also,” he adds. “You should _not_ be talking to me about study habits. Need I point out the reason you know I was in the library?”

“Okay, but I have a good reason for that,” says Rebecca, still pointing at him. “My classes start at nine on Monday morning, I’ve been procrastinating like a totally normal student, and I am at my home base. I’m so comfortable here I could totally sleep in the stacks without shame.”

“So could I.”

Rebecca wrinkles her nose doubtfully. “I mean, you are straight, white, and male so you can, practically speaking, fall asleep anywhere without fear, but _nah_.”

“What?” he challenges. “You think I couldn’t?”

“Nope. I think you’re too uptight.”

He glares at her, affronted.

“I can _so_ fall asleep anywhere,” he says, pointing at her. She frowns, but with a speculative gleam in her eyes that has him retracting the digit hastily, not entirely sure that she won’t bite it.

“I’ll bet,” she giggles, though whether from her drink or some private joke is not quite clear. Nathaniel coughs, feeling the back of his neck grow hot, and her giggles get louder.

Oddly enough, despite his embarrassment, he doesn’t feel defensive. All of his joints and connective tissue seem to have loosened in a way they hadn’t while he was with Adam and his friends, even more than he would have expected. It’s not drunkenness, but it is relaxing, which is not something he usually feels with strangers. Or most people, really.

It’s nice.

“You have an interesting personality for someone who wants to be a lawyer,” he comments.

“And I am going to take _that_ as a compliment,” Rebecca says loftily, tossing her head. The light catches her hair and weaves glinting auburn ribbons through it.

He gives her a small half-smile. “It wasn’t an insult.”

She blinks, nonplussed. “Oh.”

“I’m serious, we’ve put off this part of the conversation. What brought you to law school? Are you one of those green-earth activist types?”

“Ha ha.” She rolls her eyes and takes another sip.

“What? You’ve got the look down.”

She smacks him.

“Ow,” he yelps, nursing his stinging arm. “Seriously though.”

She shrugs. “It makes sense to me and I’m good at it. Do you need other reasons?”

Nathaniel doesn’t, really, not for most people, but something about the way she says it implies that skill really isn’t all there is to the story. He waits.

“My mom is super enthusiastic about having a hotshot lawyer daughter, too.” Rebecca looks down and away from him, picking through the bowl of pretzels for an unbroken one.  “She wanted to be one before I came along. So she doesn’t think I’m wasting my time.”

He nods; that’s a desire he knows all too well. She gives a little shake of her shoulders and clears her throat, turning back to him.

“What about you?” she prompts.

“I’ve always known I was going to be a lawyer. We have a firm down in LA, and I’ll be joining him after I graduate.”

“Sounds straightforward enough,” she says, inscrutable. She tilts her head at him in a way that makes him feel a little like he’s under a spotlight. “Very connect-the-dots. You didn’t consider anything else?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Not even for a minute?”

“I like studying law. What else would I do, run off and be an artist?”

Rebecca perks up. “Art? You’d do art?”

“It’s just an example,” Nathaniel warns. “I’m not harboring a secret passion for acrylic landscapes or anything.”

“Did you take art lessons, though?” she probes. “Hypothetically speaking, if I asked you to draw me like one of your French girls, could you?”

She throws an arm up in a dramatic arc, tilting her head back and closing her eyes like she’s one of those silent film stars in pantomime. It’s clearly ridiculous and he should point it out, but she’s also twisting her body in such a way that he’s noticing some more pronounced…areas that he had noted previously but also hadn’t entirely been paying attention to before.

He clears his throat and forces his eyes to stay up and focused on her face. “Very funny.”

“Seriously though, could you?” Rebecca asks as she rights herself, tugging down the hem of her shirt.

“Only if you like abstracts. You’d be represented by a bunch of circles.”

She laughs, mock outraged, and smacks him. “Rude.”

“Ow. Stop that.” He rubs at his chest, grimacing. “How would you draw me then?”

“Well, that’s too easy. A stick figure with five lines.”

Nathaniel can feel his eyebrows shoot high up his forehead.

“Five lines, huh?”

“Yep.” Rebecca doesn’t break eye contact. “One would be a lot shorter than the others.”

Her gaze doesn’t falter, but that doesn’t stop Nathaniel from adjusting self-consciously in his seat.

“You think you’re so funny,” he says, reaching for his drink for the sake of having something else to concentrate on instead of how she might be looking at him.

“It’s a gift,” she says.

Her gaze is flicking over his face again, and she sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, like she’s considering something.

That is right the moment when his pants start buzzing.

Nathaniel jumps and pulls out his phone from his back pocket, wincing when he sees the Hamptons phone number light up across the screen.

“Is something wrong?” Rebecca asks, concerned, clearly restraining herself from looking over.

“Oh, no,” he looks up at her, pulling himself back in the moment. “Sorry, I need to take this. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Oh,” she says, deflating. “Sure, take your time.”

He frowns at her sudden despondency, but heads outside instead of saying anything further; some things cannot wait, and his father is right at the top of the list.

~

Well.

Any call that starts with _what the hell were you thinking_ was never going to be a good one.

Okay.

So he screwed up. Or he didn’t screw up, but his father thought he did, and that was nearly the same thing.

Great, just great.

This is fine, well, okay, it’s not fine, but it will be fine. He just needs to collect himself, just breathe, get his heart rate under control and hope the flush from his face can be blamed on the cold so that when he goes to take his leave from Rebecca, she won’t be any the wiser. Then he can get back to what he needs to do. That’s good, that’s a plan, everything will be all right—

“Okay, wow.”

Shit.

Nathaniel looks, and his stomach drops when he sees Rebecca standing barely ten feet away. She seems like she wants to step closer to him, but has changed her mind without moving a muscle, and instead gives a pathetic little wave.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks, trying to be casual, but not quite able to hide the edge he gets to his voice when things are not going well.

“You were gone a long time,” says Rebecca, shivering, hugging herself against the March chill. “I wasn’t sure if you had just ditched me, or if you’re just a little directionally challenged. I kind of assumed you ditched me. That’s happened before. But then I went to check and you were still out here, and I, ah, kind of heard a few things. Sorry.”

Great. Just great.

“That was your dad, right?”

She shrinks under his glare, like she wants to pop right out of existence. Good, let someone else feel the way he’s feeling right now.

“If it makes you feel any better, it sounds like the last fight I had with my mom,” she adds, shifting self-consciously back and forth. “That’s how I ended up staying here for the week. So. I get it, is what I’m trying to say.”

Nathaniel can’t help the laugh that escapes him, bitter and cold. “I really doubt that.”

“Oh really?” Rebecca tilts up her chin at him in challenge. “So that wasn’t a tirade on how you are inevitably a disappointment for wasting your potential by not taking some new advantage of the week that they only just thought of? That didn’t just happen right now?”

She’s just trying to commiserate, he thinks to himself. Trying to make him feel better about getting caught out being yelled at. And that’s nice and all, but _nice_ isn’t about to help him improve himself.

Except.

Her picture is…not totally inaccurate. Under more ordinary circumstances, he might still try to deny it, brush it off as nothing, because strangers really have no point sticking their nose in his business. But he’s still feeling a little shaky, and Rebecca’s gaze is steady and sympathetic, not cloying.

“It might have been something like that,” he admits.

Rebecca nods, her face resolute. “Okay. Are you hungry?”

He looks up, confused.

“…what?”

“I’m hungry,” she says patiently. “Before you got your call, I was gonna ask if you wanted to go get something to eat. There’s a burger joint right next door. We can go back to my place. I don’t live far from here. And if you’re worried about me taking advantage of you, I’m really not a pity sex kind of person.”

He snorts at that. “What about inviting a strange guy into your apartment?”

“I have your name,” Rebecca points out. “And your number is still in my phone. Don’t worry, I totally have a backup plan if you start exhibiting any remotely creepy behavior.”

He should say no. He really should say no, there are things he needs to get done: go on another run, vet upcoming assignments, do extra research—

Except he’s tired, he’s supposed to be on break, and he hasn’t been, not this entire week, and he’s tired of feeling like he’s a particularly pathetic amoeba under the microscope.

“Why not?” he says instead.

~

Rebecca’s place really is only a few blocks down from the bar, but in the opposite direction from Adam’s. After picking up a large, grease-stained bag, they walk just five blocks east and two blocks north and then they are climbing the steps of a small, well-furnished building to the second floor’s door.

Rebecca puts her shoulder in the door and it opens up to a one-bedroom apartment. She makes a funny little hop-step through the door and he discovers why when he follows and nearly stubs his toes against what appears to be a giant plastic fish splayed out on the floor.

“I need to mount that,” she says with a wince. “Don’t ask where I found it – long story.”

“I can imagine.”

“You really can’t. Don’t forget to take your shoes off once you’ve got the door shut; I need to dig out the spirits.”

It takes him a second to figure out that she means alcohol.

Always one to follow instructions, Nathaniel slips off his shoes and places them neatly on the doormat, where they stand out in direct contrast to the many pairs of sneakers, heels of all sizes, and fluffy slippers that seem to be tossed haphazardly every which way, before straightening and taking his first look around the apartment. His first impression is that it is small and crammed: the sofa is a fold-down futon with a couple of throw blankets across the back and faces a flat tv that has been mounted on the left wall. A small wooden table and chairs are planted right behind the futon, and beyond them is the kitchen. The open door to the right of the entranceway leads to her bedroom, where clothes are strewn across the floor, the bed is unmade and there is a stuffed crocodile perched against the headboard that seems to be giving him the stink eye.

Rebecca is in the kitchen, assembling bottles of liquor onto the counter, along with a surprising variety of junk food. Most of the cabinet doors gaping half-open, though whether it is from Rebecca’s current raid or earlier is unclear.

His burger ended up being more of a ground beef scramble and less of a sandwich, so he wanders into the kitchen in search of cutlery.

“Don’t you have any knives?” he asks, poking through the drawer she directs him to.

Rebecca is halfway in the lazy susan and makes a full-body jolt that he assumes is her shrugging.

“I don’t cook that much,” she says, her voice muffled by the wood paneling. “The landlady is an acquaintance of my mom’s –I just borrow from her when I need anything.”

Nathaniel doesn’t find it much of an explanation for the lack of knives, but goes ahead and just digs out one of the forks –it’s not like ground beef puts up much resistance, anyways.

“You live alone?” he asks Rebecca as she emerges from the cabinet, hugging two bottles close to her chest.

“Better studying conditions.” The twist of her mouth as she says it suggests that she doesn’t entirely agree with what she’s saying. She sets the bottles at the end of the row. “On the other hand, my mom does come by to visit sometimes, just to see how things are going, and not having a roommate makes _that_ whole scenario easier to manage.”

“Hm. And here I live alone because I just don’t like people.”

Rebecca casts him an amused glance. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. So it turns out I have less alcohol than I thought, but there’s still Johnny Walker’s, hard cider, vodka of both the Grey Goose and Marshmallow varieties, absinthe, rum, and the ever-popular rosé.”

He shudders at the idea of candy-flavored liquor. “Whiskey for me, please.”

“Coming right up.”

He takes his seat as she carries their drinks out to the table, adding a couple of bags of chips and candy as an afterthought. He can see that she’s poured the rosé for herself.

They eat in silence. She wasn’t kidding about the meat being good, though she keeps making faces at his meal, the burger alone on its bed of lettuce and tomato—he ignores it, seeing as she somehow got pickle slivers and smears of mustard around her mouth and doesn’t immediately wipe them away. She does eventually, but then she keeps fidgeting, in a way that is even more distracting.

“How’s your food?” she blurts suddenly, awkwardly breaking the silence.

“It’s fine. Really, I just usually don’t eat that much.”

“Okay. Are you going to eat your fries?”

“No.” He frowns at them. “I thought I told the cashier not to include them. You can have them, I guess.”

She looks at him, eyes narrowed again like she’s evaluating if he’s pulling one on her, before shrugging and tugging the grease-stained box towards her.

 Nathaniel doesn’t really know what he’s doing here. Eating unrefined carbohydrates with a moody girl who, while remarkably ambitious in her own way, is errant and irritable and prone to changing her focus every other sentence.

Especially when he should have his father’s voice ringing in his ears right now, ice cold and reproving; _slumming it, are we, Nathaniel?_

But despite every marker that indicates that it should be to the contrary, that part of his brain is just shut down right now, in a way it hadn’t been when he’d been compelled to do further preparations, and the same way it shut down once he’d taken his spot by Rebecca in the bar, pushing off papers for a person, not for reparations, but because it had been interesting. Promising.

Confusing.

He should be more on edge right now, being alone in a stranger’s house, but Rebecca has no such self-consciousness about his presence across from her, easily chewing on his fries without problem. It’s confusing, but in some ways, it’s kind of nice, to be in the company of someone who seems to be interested in his, not tolerating it or just checking it off a list.

“You know French fries are actually Belgian, right?” she says suddenly, and it’s such a transparent attempt to introduce a distraction that Nathaniel nearly laughs.

“Ask the Belgians, I’m pretty sure they’ll insist that something so disgusting could never be their invention.”

They slingshot back and forth like that, Rebecca pulling out all kinds of esoteric facts that should be utterly useless, but that she is able to bring together for a cogent argument. Nathaniel keeps playing along, throwing up obstacles as necessary, making fun of her points to see what buttons he can press. It’s nearly intellectual enough that he doesn’t feel stupid about how he’s actively arguing about the origin of a food he never eats.

Mindful of being a good guest, Nathaniel tosses the remaining garbage from the takeout bags when they’ve finished, though he finds the placement of her garbage can—right out in the open—utterly distasteful. He returns to the table and opens the whiskey. He sips slowly, but it doesn’t take long before the burn turns to a steady heat that spreads through him, pulsing and warming him, deadening his senses.

They move from the table to the couch, still arguing in a companionable sort of way, this time about the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit. Rebecca settling a half-full bottle of rose and pouring herself another glass, while Nathaniel keeps taking slugs from the whiskey.

He would be content to sit and spitball like this, without any significant stakes, but it seems that Rebecca is not quite willing to leave his fight with his father at the bar.

“Your family owns your firm, right? The one you’re supposed to join your dad at?” she asks.

He nods, not particularly wanting to speak, but feeling like he owes her an answer anyways.

“You guys wouldn’t be part of the Plimpton & Plimpton firm, would you? In Los Angeles?”

“Yeah.” He squints at her. “You know it?”

“I looked into their internship for this summer.”

He is poised to take another sip of the whiskey, that admission has him lowering the bottle.

“Really? Did you apply?”

Rebecca talks well and despite her lack of a filter with him, Nathaniel doesn’t doubt that she would have presented well to his father and the other associates. It would be interesting, if she came down to Los Angeles for the summer. He could show her around, bring her to the beach probably. It might be nice.

But then she shakes her head and he stops that thread before it can really get going.

“It was just a whim,” she says. “I’m probably not going to leave the East Coast, like, ever. My mom would probably have a heart attack.”

He smiles reluctantly at the face she pulls.

“What was he so mad about?” she asks, softly.

He wipes his fingers on the thin napkins that came from the burger place, the ones where you need at least three or four to actually soak up all of the grease, balling them tightly in his fist. The food sits heavy in his stomach, and he doesn’t know if that’s a comment on its quality or that he’s still unsettled from his phone call.

“Do you really wanna know?”

Rebecca shrugs. “What else are we going to do?”

Fair point.

“It really wasn’t that big of a deal, actually. We had a misunderstanding about my internship application,” says Nathaniel at last. “He was having a get-together, and one of the associates had a few questions about some of my answers. I wasn’t there to give the information in person, so he called. I was able to tell him where he could find the information he wanted, and we got it sorted out.”

“You were gone a while.”

“I know.”

“For, like, thirty minutes.”

“Yeah, that happens.” His father is always efficient and to-the-point, it’s just that he tends to find many, many aspects of Nathaniel’s character and conduct to be efficient and to-the-point about.

“Was the information on your application?”

“Yep.” That had been straightforward enough, once he’d understood what his father wanted—it was the lecture that followed that had been more difficult to endure, one he should know by rote now, about how he needed to pay attention to the details, watch what he said, how he presented himself in public…

One he should know, by now, how to route.

Rebecca shifts, shuffling so that she sits cross-legged, fully facing him. “So, basically he yelled at you over nothing.”

As always, his sense of familial propriety compels him to defend his father, point out the soundness of his logic.

“I mean, this wasn’t a trivial thing. It’s a serious issue—you’ve been taking the same classes, you know them. I thought I had laid out everything clearly, but, you know. The devil’s in the details.”

She doesn’t seem convinced by his argument. “I could be wrong about this,” Rebecca pushes on, the wrinkle in the middle of her forehead deepening. “But that deadline is, like, a month away. Right?”

“That is correct,” says Nathaniel cautiously. People get like this sometimes when he talks about his father and then he has to do damage control, because otherwise they get a completely wrong picture of what his dad wants from him. “But to be competitive, I submitted for an earlier review.”

“Then why is he bothering you about it now?”

“He’s just making sure that I’m on top of things. It’s part of our agreement.”

“Agreement to do…what?”

“The steps I need to take if I’m going to join the firm after school. He’s not wrong to be annoyed with me; I need to perform at a certain level, I should have been more thorough, and after I was so impulsive already this week, it makes sense that he’s annoyed.”

Rebecca stares at him. “He’s annoyed that you submitted an application early?” she asks, and he nearly laughs at how incredulous she is.

“Not that. For coming up here instead of finishing the week out with them. Not being there to talk to the associate directly about the role I saw myself filling at the firm. That was a miscalculation on my part.”

“Miscalculation,” she repeats, disbelieving. “Right. You miscalculated by getting the hell out of dodge. You did what he asked—that doesn’t mean you should get yelled at anyways. And, not that I’m condoning this, because believe me, I think this whole thing you described is ridiculous, but if it’s gonna be nepotism, wouldn’t the old-fashioned kind be _way_ less complicated for everyone?”

He hasn’t really thought about it like that before. His father has always given him every advantage to be the best, of course, but proving that he was actually the best has always been an integral part of the progress. One that still eluded him often.

He shrugs. “We’re the Perfect Plimptons. If I’m not the best, I shouldn’t be there. And if I am, my materials and my answers should be impeachable. It’s as simple as that.”

Rebecca is still scowling fiercely. “I still think it was a jerk move. I could _hear_ him. Did he have to _yell_ like that?”

Nathaniel doesn’t have an answer for that. Or, for the fact that he is currently asking that very question of himself, and why he didn’t just spin out the request to make it seem natural, expected even, rather than something much closer to what he really felt…

Rebecca is still talking.

“Hey, this might be totally out of line, but couldn’t you just, _not_ intern there this summer? We just spent two hours reenacting my Contracts class—you have a ridiculous amount of privilege but you’re not stupid. You could get another prestigious internship somewhere else, easy.”

It’s a completely backhanded compliment, he should be offended, but a fission of pride cuts through his self-pity at her words, and while strange, it is not unwelcome.

“It’s non-negotiable,” he tells her firmly. “I _need_ to intern there this summer. He’s made a point of telling his friends in the other firms that I will be. And I can’t just get in there on his name; I need to earn it. That’s the path to success.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“That can’t happen.”

“But what if it does?” Despite the heavy meal and the alcohol, Rebecca’s gaze is as steady as it was twelve hours earlier and is still pinning him right in place.

“It can’t,” he insists. Why doesn’t she get it—nothing he does will ever be lip service, but that means that there is a chance for failure, and failure is not an option.

Rebecca looks at him, really looks at him, long and hard and steady. Something that she sees seems to convince her that yes, this is what he believes, and she comes to some kind of internal compromise.

“Well,” she says, after a short pause. “That sounds like it’ll be a wonderful summer for your mental health.”

The sarcasm in her voice cuts, but Nathaniel doesn’t deign to respond –it’s bait, pure and simple, and she doesn’t need to make him squirm any more than she already has tonight. He tenses, ready to resume the defensive.

But then she changes things up on him again.

“My mom is super difficult to deal with sometimes,” she says idly. “Getting a reprieve this week took a lot of fast talking.”

“Reprise?” questions Nathaniel, frowning and shaking his head, leaning forward and tapping his ear. She obliges his request by scooting closer, so that her knee is resting against his calf. External noises are starting to sound like they are being filtered through cotton balls, which probably means that now would be a good time to put away the liquor. He’s been monitoring his intake carefully, so he isn’t worried about overindulging, but he might have overestimated his own tolerance.

“No, _reprieve_. With a ‘V’.”

“Right.” Nathaniel looks suspiciously at the bottle and sets it down on the coffee table. “What do you mean, you got a reprieve?”

“Maybe ‘reprieve’ is not the best word,” demurs Rebecca. “We’re Jewish, so Easter isn’t exactly our holiday to begin with. But yeah, I argued that it made more sense, with the editor position and stuff, it made more sense to stay here and focus. She agreed.”

Despite her still-cheery exposition, her smile slips a little, and her eyes seem to go inwards again, as though there’s more, but she’s trying to chew it over. Nathaniel waits.

“I’ll be seeing her when I go home for my next doctor’s appointment anyways. We’re tinkering with my new prescription, which can have weird effects—not for certain, but like, it’s a possibility. I’ll be staying with her and, obviously, we’ll get plenty of quality time when that happens.”

She seems almost daring him to ask what the prescription is for—he ignores it. That’s her business, not his. He gestures for her to continue.

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “Honestly, this past week has been totally freeing because I know I don’t have to worry about her popping up unannounced. She likes to do that. Does your dad ever do that?”

Nathaniel shakes his head. “I guess he could, but it’s not worth the price of the ticket. And definitely not worth the family plane.”

He picks up the whiskey bottle for another slug. When he looks up again, Rebecca is staring at him like he took a scorpion shot.

“Your family has a private plane?”

“Private jet, actually.”

She rolls her eyes at him.

“That is ridiculous in so many ways, I don’t know even know where to begin.” She pauses and reconsiders. “Actually, you know what? It doesn’t matter. He still sucks.”

He should be annoyed that she’s insulting his dad. Super annoyed. But more and more, he’s glad that someone is on his side.

“Thank you for the external validation,” he says, holding his glass up to her in salute, and she toasts him with a little flourish that nearly slops half of her glass onto the futon cushions.

“But of course,” she demurs.

Rebecca’s shifts in mood and tone are a little confusing to navigate, but she’s already settling back in her seat like it’s easy, like she hasn’t a care in the world, but still can jump to the next topic with ease. Though their demeanors are nothing alike, he can’t help but be reminded of his old roommate and what he lacked in general efficiency, he more than made up with a very elastic way of moving through the world.

“Did you ever do theater stuff? In school?” he asks, because if she can pivot a conversation at a moment’s notice, well, why can’t he? Make her make that surprised face again.

She does, but it’s not the cute one like before; Rebecca’s looking at him wide-eyed, like she’s shocked he would even ask.

“No, why?”

“You seem like the type.”

Rebecca laughs, too bright and too quick.

“Oh god, absolutely not. Like, no way. I mean, there was a camp in high school, and I was in a play for like two minutes in undergrad, but absolutely no further involvement. My mom would probably die. Only then she’d resurrect herself from sheer outrage and pull out all of her tricks. Well, okay, she mainly has one, but it’s remarkably versatile.”

“What is that?” he prompts. It’s only fair.

“Guilt,” says Rebecca immediately. “A lot of guilt. Jewish mother guilt. Absolute heaps of it. I mean, sometimes, she has a point—I definitely fucked up last year, but in general I’ve pretty much done everything she’s ever wanted. I mean, except for popping into existence at a really inconvenient time, but that’s the Westchester Sperm Machine’s fault, mechanistically speaking.”

Nathaniel winces.

“I mean, it makes sense. He’s not around anymore for her to blame for messing up her life, and like good riddance, but it also means I get the brunt of it.”

“That really sucks,” he says.

She nods and hunches in on herself, her eyes not focused on him but somewhere inside. “All my life, she would tell me how I completely derailed her career and that she will never get those years back. As far as I can tell, studying law right now is pretty much the only way I can make it up to her. I need to become the next Ruth Gator—no, Bader,” she corrects, shaking her head. “Sorry, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Everything I accomplish until then is just installments on my life repayment plan.” She shudders and puts her face in her hands. “And I’m already past due on payments.”

Nathaniel nods in response, not because he has any idea of what it means to be in that kind of situation, with a resentful parent and the other one out of the picture, but he can see how it could be a problem. His mother might have had little to do with his schooling beyond donations and showing up regularly to the parent events, but she at least was _there_. Rebecca’s bright and loud, but with every word she speaks about her mother she grows a little more muted, and she pulls away from him, bringing up her knees to her chest. He also sits up directly, to keep facing her, to making it clear not just by expression but trying to telegraph through his body that yes, he’s listening to her.

“How?”

She scrubs a hand over her eyes.

“It’s a long story, but I had a…” she struggles, lips moving around the shapes of half-formed words before she finds the right one. “…a _falling out_ with one of my professors in senior year, someone who I really considered important. And, well, things escalated, flared up and got out of control, and there were consequences. Then I came here, and the consequences kind of followed me, and I…freaked out and managed to fuck things up even more spectacularly.”

She doesn’t elaborate, even with the space Nathaniel gives as he waits.

“It can’t have been that bad, if you’re still doing so well,” he says, when it’s clear an answer won’t be forthcoming. “Adam said you’re still at the top of the class, and you have your incoming editorship. Right?”

“You could say that,” hiccups Rebecca, exhaling through her nose like she’s trying to regulate her own breaths, her eyes too bright. “But this fuckup was, um, _way_ more spectacular than either of us wanted. I inconvenienced a lot of people.”

Something about her tone and the twist of her lips implies that the words are not her own, and Nathaniel feels a stab of painful familiarity, to see such a familiar expression on another’s face.

“Well, you’re in good company,” he says. “I’ve only ever been inconvenient.”

“I _really_ don’t think so,” says Rebecca, smiling sadly at him. “Not in the way that I mean. But thank you.”

~

They sit in silence again, but this time Rebecca doesn’t fidget as much, though her foot keeps brushing absently at Nathaniel’s ankle. He could shift away, but he doesn’t really want to, not after what she’s told him.

“Riveting Friday night, huh?” she quips. “I almost got weepy on you for a second. Uh. Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“How about this,” she snaps her fingers. “Want to play a game?”

He mock-frowns at her. “Didn’t I tell you I don’t like games?”

“You said you don’t like _most_ games,” Rebecca corrects, lolling sideways, resting her head against the top of the futon. “Which means we should find a game you do like. Come on, I’m good for anything.”

“I’m not a board game person.” He’s probably the world’s worst young adult, but Nathaniel doesn’t really know any games beyond the sports in school or the ones played solo on the computer, creating or destroying the world as one saw fit. When it comes to actual, physical board games, he mostly comes up dry.

“Well, I don’t really have any board games here, anyways. How about word games? Boggle, maybe? Scrabble?”

“I’m not really in the mood for word games.”

“Oh?” Rebecca props her chin on her fist. “Okay then. What are you in the mood for?”

She sounds flirtatious, and only just flirtatious, except that she’s twisting again in a way that draws his eyes through a line from the tilt of her head and down.

Was that a…

His mouth is dry, and when he licks his lips to moisten them he sees how Rebecca’s eyes flicker down, her attention caught, before rising to catch his gaze meaningfully, raising her eyebrows in invitation. Heat rises under his skin.

Well. Hm.

It clearly takes effort, but she pushes herself up to a crouch on the futon and in two short movements has crawled over his body, reaching out and grabbing a fistful of his button-up to haul him towards her. He goes willingly, helps Rebecca by leaning forward, one hand around the back of her neck and the other spreading against her spine and pressing to seal their bodies tightly together.

The kiss is sloppy and less coordinated than it could be but fervent, her nose pressing hard into his cheek and her palms coming up and twining around his neck and hauling him closer. His hands feel like they are sinking right through the material of her sweater, and she sighs into his mouth, and _yeouch_ , she’s not his type but that fact doesn’t seem to matter to any of the synapses in his brain that are currently being electrified right now.

They keep kissing, Rebecca sinking further onto him and like she’s going to seep through him and under his skin, the warmth of their skins intermingling, and the compulsion is to seek out more, for his hands to slip down to the hem of her shirt and work their way under, hooking his thumbs on her belt loops, pulling to tease, and Rebecca retaliating by slipping her free hand under his shirt and grasping firmly at his belt.

She’s full-on straddling his leg now, one hand around the back of his neck, slipping under his shirt to trace circles in the space between his shoulder blades. He shifts his thigh up to grind up against her, increasing the friction, and her knees buckle and her body comes down hard on top of his and she moans right into his mouth.

That sound, breathless and full of want, ironically, is what zaps him uncomfortably, painfully awake. He feels cool and clear and a little bit gross, like someone cracked an egg over his head, because this encounter is definitely spiraling into a direction he didn’t anticipate.

 “Thought you didn’t do pity sex,” he pants, trying to slow his breathing and get more oxygen circulating back into his brain.

“I don’t,” she says, also breathing hard, hair mussed and spots of pink high up in her cheeks. “That’s not really what I was going for.”

“No?”

She shakes her head and leans back in.

Pulling away is both the right thing to do and much harder than it should be.

“Okay, seriously though, this is probably not a good idea,” he says slowly, the words heavy on his tongue and he really should take his hands off her hips but the soft curve where he can rest his hands is so comfortable that it’s hard to bully his body into submission. “I’m pretty…not all there. Drunk. I mean I’m drunk.”

“Yeah?” Rebecca says blearily, eyes wide with confusion, tilting her head like she just emerged from the water. She gives herself a little shake, seems to come back into herself a little more. “Yeah. No, I’m not in the best state either for this.”

She flops forward and groans right into his neck, and yes, he gets the sentiment and shares it, even, but the spike of arousal that courses through him at the movement is completely, utterly counterproductive.

He takes a deep breath, blinking hard, and very deliberately moves his hands from her hips to her shoulders, applies pressure as gently as he can. She takes the hint and moves off him, retreating back to her side of the couch, drawing up her knees and hugging them tight to her chest. She doesn’t look at him but stares hard at the empty bottle in front of her, as if she can magically refill it with the force of her will alone.

He feels a weird prickle of guilt. It’s not like he’s totally rejecting her; he’s just rejecting the bad idea of the situation. It’s just…beer goggles, to put it crudely. He’s alone with a girl who’s not his physical type, maybe, and he’s drawn to her because she gets things a little more than most. A girl who is used to being alone and working hard to be the best. Who kisses really well, like she wants to consume him whole.

Which, he reminds himself again, is not what he came here looking for.

He needs to clear his head. Cool down for a second.

He stands and goes to her sink, fills an empty glass in the next cupboard and drinks from it. Rebecca still isn’t looking at him.

“Hey, do you want some?”

She shrugs, which he takes as assent, filling another glass to bring to her. She swallows it down in one long draught, throat flexing. She won’t look at him, which he supposes is fair.

“I…it’s late. I should probably get going,” he says, trying not to feel like a colossal dick and failing.

“Yeah,” says Rebecca, drawing a deep breath, four counts in and four counts out. A calming breath. She clears her throat. “That might be a good idea.”

“Right. I have a flight tomorrow, and I need to make sure I finish a few things up, and I have a follow-up with my dad I need to tell—”

“You should tell your dad to go fuck himself,” she says, apropos of nothing.

Nathaniel’s glass rattles as he sets it down, nearly drops it, on the countertop.

“Excuse me?”

She looks stricken, like the words fell out of her mouth without her permission, and for a moment he thinks she might take it back and they can just pretend it didn’t happen. Then her eyes meet his again, and her mouth firms up and she sets her shoulders, meeting his gaze square on.

“Tell your dad to go fuck himself,” she says, a little louder.

He’s too stunned to be processing anything, really, but he knows the little thrill that shoots through him at the thought is utterly ungrateful and completely inappropriate.

“You’re out of line,” he says coolly, composing himself.

Rebecca shakes her head. “I don’t think I am. I think that whole farce of a phone call was ridiculous. Like, what, some kind of power play? You’re doing a lot, and he can’t see that, and he sucks, and he should go fuck himself.”

He would almost laugh if he wasn’t seeing red.

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not? He’s terrible.”

“You don’t know the full situation.”

“I don’t have to know it—”

“Would you say that to your mom?” he challenges.

“That’s a totally _different_ situation—”

“Really? I don’t think so,” he shoots back. “You’re desperate to get away from her. She’s all you got, and you can’t stand the idea of spending a couple of days with her. At least I’m capable of facing mine. I paid my dues before I came here. You’re just hiding.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, _right_. Because that turned out so well for you. At least I avoided hating myself too much this week.”

“I do not hate myself,” he snaps, pacing the length the kitchen. “Why do you care, anyways? Is this because I won’t sleep with you?”

“This has nothing to do with that, you sanctimonious American Psycho,” she snarls. “If I’m miserable, then so are you.”

“I am not miserable.”

“Really? Because you did not see your face when I saw you outside the bar. You’re _miserable_ and, what’s even worse, you have _no idea why_ and it’s staring you right in the face. And you’re going to spend the summer with this guy breathing down your neck, if you meet his conditions? You’re gonna spend the rest of your life working for this guy, trying to meet whatever other ridiculous expectations he sets for you?”

That’s not true, that won’t be true, he’s going to get there, he’s not going to spend the rest of his life chasing after his father’s expectations, that’s why he’s here in the first place, getting ahead of them.

“You’re wrong.”

“Okay, I’m wrong. So you’re saying that being watched for the rest of your life will make you happy?”

“You don’t know me. I know exactly what I need to do. My path has been laid out for me and I’m happy to follow it. I know what I’m going to be and what will make me happy. I’ll make it through the firm, I’ll prove my worth, I’ll make partner, and everything will be _fine_. Do you even know what you want?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want, _I don’t care what I want!_ ” she shouts, then looks stricken, this time for something he can’t possibly understand. It’s like watching a deflating balloon; all of the fight seems to go out of her and she puts her face in her hands, fists tugging hard enough that her hair that, despite his own anger, Nathaniel fears that she might actually pull it out.

“I want to be happy,” she says, pitiful and small, shoulders drooping. “That’s it.”

And just like that, he can feel it draining out of him too. The girl at the bar earlier this evening –she seemed happy, to some degree or another, but that definitely isn’t true of the one in front of him now.

“You don’t have anything that would make you happy now?” he finds himself asking.

“I know things that make me happier,” she says. “Working out problems makes me happier, editing makes me happier. Knowing that I banged Audra Levine’s boyfriend before she found out he was a rotten lay makes me happier. This night made me happier than I’ve been all week, until now.”

The darkness of the apartment, luminated only by unfriendly fluorescent overhead in the kitchen and the more traditional table lamp on Rebecca’s side, now seems cold and uninviting rather than somewhere safe, somewhere to hide.

“Well,” he says. “It was the same for me. Until now.”

Rebecca is still breathing noisily, her chest heaving as she struggles to contain whatever force of emotion is within her, no longer clean anger but still painful. Her face is blotchy, whether from the alcohol or embarrassment or rage Nathaniel has no idea –he can’t imagine that whatever weird expression is contorting his own face right now looks all that much better, anyways, and the air is too warm and stuffy in the apartment.

Rebecca takes a deep breath that almost sounds like a sob.

“You should probably go,” she says, looking down at her feet.

“I should,” he says, his voice cold to his own ears, colder than he means.

She doesn’t move from the couch, her arms tightly around herself, as he lets himself out.

~

Even tipsy, it doesn’t take much to retrace his steps back to the bar, and further.

Adam is still awake, in the living room and on his phone.

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” says Adam, when Nathaniel finally makes it back to the apartment. “Please tell me that you got laid and weren’t just walking the streets all night or something.”

“It was something,” says Nathaniel, dropping down on the couch, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm.

~

Rebecca is still in his head the next day, and his stomach feels sour, not just from too much alcohol but from that final, bitter exchange.

Nathaniel usually doesn’t care what opinions people have about them –let them hate him, whatever, they don’t matter—but the way they left things just sits heavy on his chest.

It doesn’t feel right, to leave things like that.

Despite what he said to Rebecca, he’s had those doubts. He knows, in a vague kind of way, that his father’s methods of showing concern for him are not really what he needs. He knows his relationship with his father really isn’t the one he wants.

He gives himself the day to mull it over, after sleeping until nine and going out on his morning run. Late night or not, a routine is a routine. He’ll just get some energy drinks to compensate.

He meant his last words, he realizes. It’s not that a stranger essentially stripped down his issues with his father so boldly, but he really meant what he said about her mother, that it might do her some good to break away. Which makes it much more complicated than just a stranger insulting his life choices; that’s happened before, and usually he brushes them off, easy.

But what happened with Rebecca is not quite the same thing, but also completely is the same thing. He doesn’t owe her anything, but…a few additional words might not be uncalled for.

Her number is still in his call record. He ignores the twinge at seeing the number right above it and hits the redial.

It’s a total whim and he mostly anticipates that he’ll get her un-set-up voicemail and that will be the end of this weird left turn.

“Hello? Who is this?”

…Except she answers.

“Is this Nathaniel?” she asks, in the pause while he is still fumbling for his words. She says his name a lot more gently today, something softer and more tentative. He kind of likes it.

Nathaniel’s never been much of a caller to begin with, and that action is already a major concession to the fact that he owes a kind-of stranger an apology; it’s even worse now that she had the audacity to answer. He panics for a half minute before he composes himself enough to answer.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says, cringing even though she cannot see it. “We left things a little cold last night.”

“We did,” she agrees, her tone neutral and lacking inflection, and he has no idea what her face is doing, and _this_ is why he hates calling people.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Look, I wanted you to know that I meant what I said about your mom, but not like that. I just think that you have a lot going for you, and she’s making you way more miserable than necessary.”

He can hear her breathing on the end of the line, processing. His pulse jumps somewhere between his ears, so that it is the only other sound he can hear beyond her breathing, everything else just falling away.

“I’m sorry too,” she admits. “I’ve been feeling raw all week and it kind of exploded on you as this hot, sticky mess that you really weren’t a part of. I don’t think the sexual frustration helped, either. Coitus interruptus always makes me cranky.”

That makes him laugh again, small but genuine and tugged gently up from a well deep within him that is capable of emotions that are not linked to his immediate goals. He’s loose again, no longer so tightly wound.

He hears her own shaky giggle on the other side of the line.

“When do you leave?” she asks. “Today, right?”

“Not until this evening.”

“Do you want to stop by?” she asks. “It was nice talking to you before, you know, I ruined everything.”

“I would like that,” he says immediately. Then, “Rebecca?”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t ruin everything on your own. I was out of line, too. I’m sorry about that.”

He can hear her smile.

“That’s good to hear.” He can hear her smile. “See you in a few.”

~

Nathaniel is packed and out of Adam’s place in under an hour, making up some story that there was something messed up with his flight and he needs to take an earlier one. It says something, either about their friendship or Adam’s state of panic over a paper he had forgotten that he doesn’t comment at all.

Rebecca is smiling when she opens the door and doesn’t even bat an eyelid at his luggage.

“Hello stranger,” she says, with a peculiar lilt, leaning her elbow against the doorframe. “What brings you back to this neck of the woods?”

Nathaniel should find the funny voice annoying, or at least jarring after their blow up, but instead the remaining traces of trepidation evaporate, and his shoulders slacken, and he’s able to smile with ease.

“What if I said I was here for the pleasure of your company?”

“I’d say that you need better friends,” she says, not bothering to hide her grin, stepping aside to let him in.

In the early afternoon light her apartment looks cozy rather than cramped, though no less cluttered, with clothing that might be clean or might be destined for the laundry brushed into the corners of the room, the student collection of pots and pans right above the stove. The alligator perched at the foot of her bed looks at home and less like it is trying to scare Nathaniel when he passes her open bedroom door.

“I’m making lunch,” Rebecca calls over her shoulder, pulling out a bag of bagels and a cream cheese tub. “Have you eaten yet?”

“I’m fine.”

She nods and drops the precut halves into the toaster, then turns back to him, hands pressed together.

“So, before we commence with…whatever this is, I just wanted to say something.”

“Yeah?”

Rebecca braces her hands on the counter and takes a deep breath. “My wording was a little…strong, yesterday, due to the influence of alcohol and some general…frustration.”

Nathaniel nods, trying to keep his own expression still, and not let the smile that wants to get out curl up the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t think he succeeds, if the way Rebecca bites her lip and ducks her head down is any indication.

She continues, “But I think my general intent was sound. I think he was a dick. I think he has been a dick and you shouldn’t pay attention to him.”

It stings, but if Nathaniel is willing to be honest to himself, it’s not something he didn’t already know before.

“And, as much as I would rather not say it, you’re not wrong about my mom. She and I have a complicated relationship that could probably do with some better boundaries that don’t involve me locking myself away in an apartment or turning off my phone during the day because if I see her name I have this immediate compulsion to pick it up, even if it’s going to totally sink my day. I need to work on that.”

“Wow, okay.” He realizes that she’s expecting a similar sentiment from him and he mentally scrambles. “My father

Rebecca gives a firm nod. “Glad we’re in agreement. So, in the conclusion we already know, both of our parents suck, we shouldn’t pay so much attention them and it’s spring break and we’re interesting people. Let’s just talk and enjoy ourselves a little.”

 “Let’s do that,” he agrees, relieved.

She points to the toaster. “You sure you don’t want some of these? I have some pretty awesome schmears to go with, if you’re up to trying them.”

He could probably make a comment about his carb count being shot after yesterday, but Nathaniel just shakes his head.

They make idle chatter, Rebecca relaying gossip about the current law journal editors while Nathaniel nods along and mentally filing away any names that could be useful for later. She asks after a few people that she knows went to Stanford, and he even recognizes some of the names, and reports on their various character foibles to her great amusement. He does eventually give in and steals an apple from her refrigerator, warding off the peanut butter she tries to push onto him as a condiment, and helps clear away the counter when they are finished.

When the last plate is put away, they seem to abruptly run out of conversation. Something heavy and expectant weighs in the air.

“So…” she begins, at the same time he does, and they both laugh, a little awkward, suddenly shy.

“You go ahead,” he says.

“All right. When do you have to leave?”

“My flight leaves at six.” His mouth is suddenly dry.

“So you have time.”

“Just a little.”

She wets her lips, and it’s very, very difficult to keep his eyes held with hers.

“I forgot to ask, last night. I got tested for STDs recently,” she says suddenly. “And got tested again, so. I know I’m clean. Are you?”

“Yeah, I passed the window the last time.”

“Good,” She says. Her eyes are crawling the length of his body again and this time he knows very definitely that they are on the same wavelength and the latent desire that has been rising to the surface at odd times throughout the afternoon sparks and surges up into something hot.

“Huh. I thought I wasn’t your type,” she says, leaning back against the sink, arms lightly crossed, tipping her head to the side. It’s a bit flirtatious and coquettish, but underneath he can tell that she is curious.

“I really don’t think type plays into this at all,” he says, stepping forward, carefully inching into her personal space, his eyes still on her lips. “Because I am ninety percent sure that I am not your type either.”

She tips her chin up at him, lengthening the line down to the loose collar of her t-shirt and her clavicle, letting her hands come to rest on the counter edge beyond her, her grip loose and easy, bowing out the curve in her back.

“You’re really not,” she says, levering herself back up and stepping forward, her hands on her hips, the slight twist of her smile a little cocky, a little tempting to close the distance and see what she makes of it.

“And yet here we are,” he says, unable to stop the grin and the resulting anticipation that unfurls through him.

“Here we are,” she says, and pounces.

And, well, shit.

It’s really hot.

She has her hands at his jaw, fingers brushing right at the most sensitive places, the notch right between his ears and the beginning of his jawline, before traveling upwards and fisting in his hair, pulling ungently. His hands aren’t idle; one cups the back of her head, tilting her head to better guide her enthusiasm, the other hauling her close.

But kissing someone who is practically a foot shorter was not a simple maneuver, especially when he doesn’t know the apartment layout well enough to let her walk him backwards wherever she wants this done.

His hands had been at her waist, fingers splayed wide around her hips, dipping just below the band of her sweats, pinching gently at the soft skin there, rubbing circles. She whines in protest when he withdraws them, only to yelp when he hoists her up by the backs of her thighs.

She adjusts quickly, hooking her legs around his waist and interlocking her hands behind his neck, bending back down to catch his mouth with hers and he has to move carefully, walking her across the apartment, blindly pushing her bedroom door further open as he carries her to her bed. It’s good that her apartment is so tiny, otherwise he might have just tried for the lumpy futon again and stayed there.

His legs bump against the edge of the bed and he drops her gently onto it, but she keeps her grip around his neck and pulls him on top of her, one hand leaving its resting place on his neck, the other shifting and sliding down his back, following the line of his spine. The shirt she’s wearing is soft and threadbare and he peels it off and drops it over the side of the bed, eyes drawn to the newly revealed skin. His hands slide up to caress her breasts, thumbs brushing over her nipples. She arches back at his touch, squirming and pulling down his head to kiss him again, her fingers carding through his hair before sliding down to the hem of his own shirt to peel it off.

He lets her, dipping back down into the crook of her neck, kissing her right at the tender places just below her ear and under her jaw and following the pale green pathways in her neck and for the first time all weekend, actually making her squirm. She mewls and bucks her hips, arching up to meet him. He groans and reciprocates, brain shocking blank to white noise against the graze of her nipples against his chest and how her fingers are digging into his back.

He returns to her mouth and kisses her fully again as his hand slips between them, dipping below the band of her sweats and underwear. It doesn’t take long to find what he’s looking for, aided by her murmured encouragements. He works her slowly, despite their initial frenzied pace, watching closely as her eyes widen and fall shut, her head pressing back against her pillow, and she cries out when she comes, nearly arching off the bed.

“Huh, so you do know where that is,” she gasps, when her breathing closer to normal but not all the way there yet, as he leans back down to mouth at the hollow of her throat. “Good.”

“Don’t get a lot of that around here, do you?” he murmurs, pushing forward and kissing her again. She returns it, full and lingering, before leaning back, pointedly rolling her eyes at him.

“Yeah, but that’s a male thing, not a Yale thing, so don’t look to me to stroke your _ego_.” She lifts her hips, grinding against him. “That’s, ah, _not_ the part I’m interested in.”

He can hear her smirk as he groans and drops his face into her neck.

“Obviously,” he grits through his teeth, before turning his head to nip at her earlobe.

She gasps and repeats the motion, laughing outright when the sensation is strong enough that he drops down to rest his weight on his forearms, more of his body settling over hers, between her legs. The friction is nearly painful, and he just needs to take care of one thing first.

“Let me—” He starts to pull away, except Rebecca’s hands clamp more firmly around his neck and pulls him back down to her, settling him in the cradle of her hips.

“Came prepared, didn’t you?” she puffs in his ear. “So did I—the drawer. I have condoms in the drawer.”

Nathaniel nods in acknowledgement, and this time when he rolls off her, she lets him, squirming out of the rest of her clothes while he shucks his own. Then he’s got the condom on and Rebecca is pulling him back over her, giggling and catching his mouth with hers as they just let themselves fumble and falter, find their rhythm and make it _good_.

~

“Okay,” she says later. “Okay, so just to be clear, I wasn’t planning on jumping you when I invited you over. Seriously.”

Nathaniel gives a vague-sounding grunt that means, _I don’t think I care_.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Rebecca insists. “But. But, I definitely would have regretted not doing it. That was actually really satisfying.”

She’s splayed out on her back, breathing slowly, arm thrown over her eyes. Nathaniel is still a little dazed, despite coming down from the high, her bedsheets tangled under them. His heart pounds sill in tandem with hers, and while they aren’t cuddling, they are still pressed together, her leg slung over his. Despite his usual hangups with personal space he has no intentions of moving from his current position.

Maybe once he’s scraped enough of his brain off the ceiling.

“Isn’t it usually?”

“Not always. Definitely not always,” Rebecca pulls a face. “It’s absurd.”

“They just don’t bother to pay attention,” Nathaniel observes drowsily. “I’m good at keeping track of things.”

Rebecca cackles, rolling onto her side to grin at him.

“Oh really? Would you say you’re a _particularly good finder_ , then?”

He eyes her suspiciously. “That sounds like a reference. Is that an obscure musical theater thing? Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“A Very Potter Musical? Starkid? Really? You’ve never seen it? Wow, okay, that needs to change.”

“It sounds stupid.”

“Yes, but in a very smart way. Anyways, if you’re a finder, you’re a Hufflepuff.”

“As long as I’m Cedric,” he says, not caring the least how her grin grows at his admission.

“Knew you weren’t a casual fan,” she says, satisfied. “That being said, you might be good at finding things, but your timing absolutely sucks.”

That brings him to lift up his head to scowl at her. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

Quite the opposite, gasping and shuddering the way she did, head thrown back, both hands and heels digging so deeply into his back that he’s certain he’ll find bruises.

“That’s not what I mean,” she says, finally deigning to raise her head off her pillow, sweat-soaked strands pressing a wave against her cheek. “I mean your literal sense of timing. When’s your flight again?”

“Six.”

“ _Ugh,_ ” she groans, falling back onto the pillows, her arm thrown dramatically over her eyes. “We are cutting it so close right now.”

“I only need to be at the airport an hour before my flight,” Nathaniel points out helpfully. “I’ll board first anyways.”

She laughs sleepily, cracking an eyelid at him.

“Are you gunning for another round?” She rolls over and somehow insinuates herself even more fully against the length of him, flattening her hands against his belly, teasing to go lower.

Nathaniel clears his throat. “You’re, ah, gonna need to give me some more time. But I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Just what a girl loves to hear,” says Rebecca, laughing, and reaches back up to pull him in for another kiss.

~

Nathaniel doesn’t know who falls asleep first, but he’s the first to wake after their second round, sprawled on his back with a curiously heavy sensation across his body and without any feeling in his right arm—a quick glance to his side shows that Rebecca is using his arm as a pillow, sleeping on her stomach with her leg and arm thrown across his body. He feels heavy and languorous and like he’s only just closed his eyes, but one look at his phone and it’s clear that he’s been there for some time.

Rebecca doesn’t wake up as he eases his arm out from under her head, but she frowns in sleep and shifts closer, her arm tightening its grip around his waist. It’s not a familiar sensation, not a single moment of déjà vu, but he feels warmth suffuse his chest, for the surprising ease he has for her (and he thinks she might feel for him).

He has two hours before his flight heads out and absolutely no molecule within him is interested in moving beyond the stable structure of this room.

But the fact is, class starts again on Monday and he needs to move, leave this bed, leave this state, so that he can be there bright and early and ready to continue excellence.

“Rebecca?” He nudges her gently. Her frown deepens and he’s pretty sure that she is actually awake, judging by her utterly annoyed grunt as she buries her face deeper into the pillow.

“Five more minutes,” she says, her voice muffled by the cotton.

“After I’m gone,” he says. “I need to get dressed for the airport.”

This time she yields, flopping over onto her back, puffing her hair out of her eyes, blinking blearily, as he rolls out and starts the hunt for his clothes.

“I’m surprised you woke me,” she says, sitting up without bothering to cover herself, watching openly as he redresses. “You seem to be the type to love ‘em and leave ‘em.”

“That’s not quite fair,” Nathaniel defends, feeling vulnerable, despite being the dressed party. “I tell girls when I’m leaving. No point in not being forward about it if we were clear about what we wanted.”

“How noble,” she drawls. She doesn’t sound put out, but he still feels a prickle of self-consciousness, despite the fact that, of the two of them, he’s the one wearing pants.

“Nothing noble about it,” he says. “It’s practical. You’re going to have to lock the door after I leave.”

“Probably not,” she agrees, the side of her mouth turning up to a rueful smile. She’s looking more awake now. “Hey, you can use the shower, if you need it. I don’t think you want to be on a plane for six hours smelling of sex. You should at least try to be classier than that.”

Nathaniel grimaces. “I’ll take you up on that.”

~

When he reemerges from the bathroom, which is cramped and covered with products that resemble an earthquake she never quite bothered to pick up after, Rebecca has pulled her t-shirt and sweats back on and has a book open in her lap. She looks up and smiles at him, and he feels a prickle in his chest, a warmth at her pleasure at seeing him.

“How are you getting to the airport?” she asks.

“Cab. Do you mind if I ask them to come here?”

“Go ahead.”

She’s noticeably more antsy as they wait for the car to arrive, moving around the kitchen, ostensibly clearing away the mess, though to Nathaniel it seems more like she’s shuffling piles of things from one side of the counter to another. He busies himself with checking his luggage and his wallet and counting his keys. He doesn’t quite know what to say –he’s hooked up with girls plenty of times, both with girls he’s liked and girls he’d never met before—but this whole…situation is somewhat unprecedented territory for him.

“I take it you aren’t going to be in California anytime soon?” he finds himself asking.

Rebecca shakes her head, brow crinkled, and when she looks back up at him properly it is with a rueful smile. “I’m afraid not. I think my future is in New York. How about you? Any business there?”

He shakes his head.

“Of course not,” she says. “You laidback beach types could never survive a proper winter storm.”

He rolls his eyes. “Right, of course, that’s the reason. Totally not the fact that you East Coast people are hella weird.”

Rebecca gasps and presses her hand over her head.

 “‘Hella’? Are you really, actually saying that to me?” She raises her eyebrows. “After I just did you so good here?”

“I hate it too, but it’s the only adjective that really gives the right emphasis to this place.”

“So much that you used improper grammar?” She laughs and he doesn’t hide his reflexive grin. But then the moment fades, replaced with the reminder that, like it or not, that was going to be it.

“It was good to meet you,” she says, looking down at her feet.

“You too,” he says softly, though the words feel remarkably inadequate, that for a short period of time he’s forgotten about impending threats and deadlines and the gaping chasm where his future should be, and he feels it is probably the same for her.

She surprises him by rushing forward and throwing her arms around his shoulders, and he wildly thinks for a minute that she’s going for another kiss, but then she buries his face in his neck and her arms tightens around his shoulders in a hug instead. He returns it tentatively at first, one hand resting gingerly between her shoulder blades, before giving in letting himself wrap his other arm behind her back, holding her tight.

“Good luck with everything,” she says. “School, your dad—whatever. All of it.”

“You too.”

They don’t exchange information. Rebecca doesn’t ask and therefore neither does Nathaniel. It would make this encounter seem almost banal, promises to keep in touch that never get fulfilled, and he’d rather not do that; besides, he figures there’s no way Rebecca Bunch will vanish from his memory. And he has her number in his phone now. He can always call, if he needs to, if it really comes down to it.

As the cab pulls away from the curb, Nathaniel hopes she will talk to her mom. Is almost certain that she will.

He doesn’t know when he’ll talk to his dad. He wants to, and maybe even he will, but if he does well this year, maybe his dad will ease up and a talk won’t be necessary.

If not, if his dad remains unreasonable…then he will.

He will.

He doesn’t want another person to disappoint.

~

~

 

~

~

Since coming to West Covina, Rebecca Bunch has been embroiled in the making of a love story that has been in suspension for nearly ten years, only to be restarted by a sudden, wonderful twist of fate. She is now dating the love of her life and the light of her world, Josh Chan, and everything should be perfect.

Except it’s not.

Like, really not.

Perfect love stories do not commence with a former lover showing up again. Especially not seated at the head of the table in the main conference room when you walk in wearing your Raging Waters outfit.

Nor do they chide you for being late with nary a flicker of recognition.

“What’s going on here?” she asks, instead of the million other questions that are racing through her mind that she would normally give voice to, looking between him and Darryl.

Rebecca loves checklists, she really does, she loves checklists and planners and many-colored highlighters. But she does not love the checklist that is assembling line-by-line, lightning-fast in the confines of her cranium at this particular moment, as Darryl is dithering about their new boss AKA Nathaniel Plimpton III AKA not Nathaniel Plimpton I or II AKA that Stanford kid she commiserated about her mother and then hooked up with at the end of spring break AKA Handsome Hitler and she’s standing right next to him and trying to pretend that no, she does not know this guy personally, she is just generally disgusted by the concept of him.

So, checklist time:

Step one: have an explanation ready for Paula, because there is no way that Paula missed her double-take when she walked into the room.

Step two: figure out if he remembers her, because she’s…actually not entirely sure. He’s been looking at her steadily since she walked in, but she can’t tell if it’s just because they spent so much time waiting for her or in a ‘I-have-seen-your-O-face’ kind of way.

Rebecca skates over the fact that she’s not sure if that makes the situation better or worse and right into:

Step three: get this wrapped up ASAP because at the end of the day, her date to Raging Waters does take priority.

In a way, it is more reassuring that he might not remember her. Granted, she hasn’t given him much time to say anything, but Nathaniel Plimpton III (good thing he left out the numeral when they met the first time, because _seriously_ ) is the type that addresses elephants in the room directly, unless the elephant is his father.

And even if he does remember her, Rebecca reminds herself that it was such a long time ago that really, it doesn’t matter now. Nathaniel Plimpton just one entry in her long list of casual sexual partners.

Sure, she still remembers his name, some of the finer details about his father’s assholery, the way he said her name, the scrape of his five o’clock shadow, and the press of his hands at her waist and her thighs and between…

Right. Don’t think about that. It doesn’t matter.

She has to wrap this up so she can go to Raging Waters and enjoy herself for the day, then reflect tonight on the best way to approach the situation neutrally and professionally—

“Miss Bunch? Can I see you in my office, please?” he asks lightly, like it is a perfectly normal request between two strangers.

_Shit._

It nearly eclipses the fact that she is following him into Darryl’s office. Or former office, as the case may be. She wants to point it out, pick at everything, but also her brain is still processing and discarding ways to approach the situation that will not be totally weird.

He goes around the desk before turning back to her, tucking his hands in his pockets. The cultivated stubble is really a good look on him, she thinks unwittingly. Unwillingly.

“What’s with all of the Native American stuff? It looked like a New Mexico gas station in here.”

All right, small talk. Good, she could handle small talk.

“He’s one-eighth Chippewa. It’s not weird or anything.”

His eyebrows shoot straight up his forehead. “Is that how he got into law school? Okay. I was wondering.”

…wow, she slept with this guy? Yeah, she was definitely leaning on the side of he did not remember. And that was cool, that was fine, it meant she could just relax.

“All right, look, you seem like a very confident and self-assured young gentleman, but—”

“Are you really going to admit you don’t remember me?”

That catches her off guard. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I didn’t realize it was you when Whitefeather came on our radar,” he says, just a little too casually. “I had to ask Darryl to be sure.”

…well, there goes her forgotten theory.

He is looking at her expectantly, ready for her to confirm whatever it…was.

“Pardon?” she asks, pulling her eyes wide open. There is no way that he was going to bring it up while talking to her as his employee. No freaking way.

 “We met a few years ago. Goldman library, at Yale? I was there visiting a friend of mine—”

“Adam Giovanni,” she remembers, unwittingly. “Right. You needed my book.”

He nods. “Which you were so kind as to lend it to me.”

That was definitely not what she remembered about meeting him and she will eat her shoes if that is the extent of what he remembers. But if he wants to play it that way, like they didn’t yell at each other about their parents and life choices and then hooked up afterwards, she’s more than happy to play along.

“Right.”

“Rebecca Nora Bunch Esq, Yale class of 2013,” he recites, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I was wondering if it was you, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

“Of course,” says Rebecca, willing her brain to come up with something, anything to say to start taking control of the conversation.

“It’s good to see that you made it out to California after all,” he says, tugging a little at his tie. “Congratulations on making Editor-in-Chief, by the way.”

She eyes him suspiciously.

“Have you been keeping tabs on me?”

Nathaniel gives her an unimpressed stare.

“Not even remotely. Stanford gets copies of the Yale Law Journal for their library. I was pulling them for a particular article and I happened to see your name listed on the contributions page. Your staff did good work.”

“Oh,” she says, surprised by the thought that he might have checked. “Thank you.”

An unexpected and utterly unwanted warmth blossoms in her chest and she smiles without thinking about it. Nathaniel nods incrementally, a slight smile softening the angles of his face.

 “I mean, I’m still surprised to find you here. I mean, it’s to my advantage to have an attorney of your caliber, but this firm is not exactly on your level.”

“I thought you said you weren’t making assumptions.”

“Oh, I’m not,” he says, settling in Darryl’s chair. “You seem to be the only competent person who works here. You’re the one who put this place on our radar, after all. We’re going to be running this place like a real business…”

Just as quickly, the warmth turns to ice.

And there he goes, rattling off everything that made her life hell for the last few years like it’s something to be expected, desirable, even, and like he expects her to help him and just…no. She could replace the man in front of her with any other corporate suit and it wouldn’t make a difference.

Her disappointment in that fact is sudden and startling in its intensity.

She can’t deal with this right now.

“Actually, things have changed a lot for me since we last spoke,” she interrupts. He looks at her with polite interest. “I switched a few things around and came to where my true happiness is and what you have described is literally everything I moved across the country to get away from. So, good to see you, we should catch up some time, but…if it’s going to be like this, I quit.”

He seems surprised, sitting back fully in his chair, and for a second Rebecca wonders if he’s going to reconsider what it means to walk into a place and immediately assume control over every possible aspect.

But then he shrugs and turns to his papers on his desk.

…really? That’s it? No appeals to their history? Not that she wants that…but seriously?

“I told you, I quit.”

“Great. You quit.” He looks at her, calm as anything and she kind of wants to punch him in the face. “Now I only have to fire four people.”

Rebecca immediately walks back into the office. “What?”

It’s his father’s stipulation, of course it’s his fucking father, and he talks about fulfilling that quota like it’s just a trip to the bank, like it’s nothing, firing four people.

Well, she can’t leave _now_.

~

Nathaniel’s office switcharoo means that she’s been kicked out of her office, though at least he didn’t rub that in, and while it’s kind of nice to be cubicle buddies with Paula it also means that she is closer in proximity to a potential interrogation about Nathaniel, if Paula noticed.

Good news: Paula is too frazzled about being fired to even mention it.

Bad news: Paula is frazzled about being fired, and Rebecca really needs to get to work on that, pronto. Sending Josh away sucks, absolutely, but she needs her focus in the here and now and he will only be a distraction to that.

But more than the awkwardness is the disappointment that continues to seep throughout the day, that he turned out exactly the way she had thought she would when she first met him. That he has not only turned out as some total jerk, but he seems to be _thriving_ as a total jerk.

It had been nice to imagine that Nathaniel had taken her advice, stuck his courage to the sticking place and actually done something to make himself happier. It had been nice to tell herself that even she hadn’t been able to do what he asked, that at least some good had come out of their very brief encounter, beyond having fantasy material on nights when she didn’t have a warm body besides her.

If anything, he’s gotten worse. The Nathaniel Plimpton she’d encountered at school was a bit of a dick, but this new version is another piece of work entirely. Hearing him casually insult Darryl and the rest of the firm is just… _eugh_.

He didn’t become fine wine but sour grapes.

But more important than the fact that the last few years have been kind to him despite his continued descent into the world of high-powered lawyering is the fact that he’s about to fire all of her friends, that is clearly the more important fact to take away from this whole scenario.

She buries herself back in her work, hitting up all of her past connections to drum up new business, staying well she usually leaves, and then even later, until Nathaniel is the only other person in the office with her.

Some part of her can admit that she does this to see if he might be different when it is just the two of them. Then maybe some aspect of the person she met might reemerge and be reasoned with.

That hope is slightly dented, however, when she goes to his office and finds it full of water polo memorabilia.

Of all the absurd—

“Nice bonnet,” she can’t help but snipe when she sees the picture, looking between the terrifying person there and the one seated safely behind a desk. His hair is tamer now, but still sticks up enough that she wants to run her fingers through it.

He gives her an unamused look but sets the ball on its stand behind him and pulls his papers back in front of him. Probably the ones he is looking at in preparation for layoffs.

“Why didn’t you say anything when I came in?” she asks instead, trying for casual, sitting on the couch arm, trying not to jiggle her foot or give off the sense of anything than being perfectly and utterly composed.

He shrugs and leans back in his chair. “Given the informal nature of our first meeting, I felt it would be inappropriate.”

“Right. Informal. Good word.” Her foot twitches; she glares it into submission. “Right.”

“I thought so.” He sets down his pen. “I actually have a question for you, Rebecca, now that you have a moment.”

Hearing her first name catches her sideways, tilts her briefly back to her old apartment, and the afternoon spent laughing and fooling around and forgetting the pressures of her life for a few sweet hours.

“What do you want to know?” she asks, less belligerent than she would like to be.

“Why West Covina?”

And that…sounds like a human question, actually. He certainly looks more human now, less smug and pompous, his expression open.

“Like I told you earlier, it’s where the happiness is. I was crying a lot in New York, and so I decided I really needed to see things through, somewhere else. Follow my bliss. And my bliss led me to something wonderful—Josh Chan.”

“I think I saw him when you came in earlier,” says Nathaniel, noncommittal, unimpressed. “Still, I’m surprised that you didn’t look up any firms of serious caliber when you decided to come to California.”

“Like Plimpton, Plimpton & Plimpton?” she asks, a touch sarcastically. “I see you made partner. Congratulations.”

He shrugs, as if to say, _but of course_.

“Just an observation.”

“I mean, a big part of moving to California was deciding to put happiness before success, which, given what you told me about your firm, the little we talked about it, didn’t really seem to provide the kind of lifestyle switch I was going for. Especially after seeing what it did to you.”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You know, we had that little talk, about being miserable?”

“Oh, you mean when you suggested that I go tell my father to…” He makes a twirling motion with his index finger.

She winces. “Yeah.”

“Right. I mean, don’t misunderstand, I appreciated the support at the time. But my father’s expectations were perfectly realistic; I just wasn’t managing myself well. I mean, it’s the first year of law school, right? Even you said you had some trouble in the first semester, right?”

“Right,” she echoes, disheartened. Was this how she was a few years ago, convinced that what she was doing was right, of course it was right? It must have been. “I just thought you might have reconsidered a few things. Maybe not have gone to work for your father who comes up with arbitrary deadlines.”

His eyebrows shoot high up on his forehead. “Excuse me? Why would I do that?”

“It’s not like you don’t have a soul, but I can’t believe that after everything you told me, about wanting to make your own choices, you just let it all get trampled under your daddy issues.”

Nathaniel sits back in his chair, fingers flexing over the armrests.

“Rebecca, you are being extremely inappropriate—”

“No, I think this is definitely fair game, the way you’ve been talking about everyone else here.” She crosses her arms, incensed. “I was so sure that after our little talk, you’d go and tell the old man off or something. But nope, you went ahead and just became Daddy’s little yes man after all, didn’t you?”

Nathaniel goes pale under his tan, and for a second Rebecca thinks that he might snap back, just like he did before, and good for him, but then he takes a deep breath, more counts out than in, and when he opens his eyes they are like chips of ice.

“What about you?” he fires back. “You seemed ready to go tell your mom off, and I kind of assumed that if you came out here, you were ready to do your own thing. Instead, from what I can understand from Darryl, you’re content to just coast along, missing work every other day, and on top of that, you just gave me a whole speech about how you found happiness in one guy? That guy? The human flipflop? Really, that’s all it took? That’s disappointing.”

He’s trying to goad her, deliberately looking for buttons and she won’t let him get to them. Rebecca plants her hands on his desk and leans forward, as menacingly as she can manage.

“You are _completely_ missing the point,” she growls, the sound scraping from the back of her throat.

Nathaniel remains seated, his knuckles white from where he’s gripping the armrests so tightly he might break them. His eyes are still firmly on her face, but he’s definitely not looking at her eyes anymore.

“And what would that be?” he asks, deadly quiet.

It’s that he didn’t change. That all of their talking meant zilch. That he told her she shouldn’t be afraid to change things for herself while he didn’t even try. It isn’t fair that he’s here now, matching her first impression of him perfectly, threatening her friends. He even has the nerve to still be ridiculously handsome instead of gone to seed with misery.

And now she’s got to deal with all of it.

Rebecca takes a deep breath and lifts her hands off the desk, holding them in front of her like she can put up a wall between them, so that she can block out this unfortunate present-day iteration of Nathaniel Plimpton and preserve the other one, the nice one who seemed to care about things despite himself. They are two separate people and she should treat them as such.

“You know what? You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Like you said, it was just a coincidence that we’ve met before. And clearly, we have both changed a lot since then, so there’s no point arguing about it. We should just move on and start over. Begin with a fresh slate. What do you say to that?”

“That is _exactly_ what I was hoping for,” says Nathaniel with his most ingratiating smile. Rebecca flexes her fingers, itching to get rid of it. “It was a long time ago. No point in treating it with any special importance. Perhaps once things settle here a little more, then we can have a little talk. Catch up a bit and talk about the future of the firm.”

“Can I get you to stop firing people arbitrarily?”

“It’s not arbitrary, but if you can pull through with the money we need, then their jobs are safe.”

“Good. Then I look forward to working together.” She sticks out her hand. With a slightly questioning look, he takes it, his long fingers brushing her pulse point and making her heart rate spike unintentionally. She drops his hand as quickly as she can. He doesn’t seem offended, only perturbed, looking suspiciously at his hand like he might have caught cooties from her. How ridiculous.

He pulls at his tie, loosening it and straightening back up in his seat. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

Oddly, he looks more like he did in school, with an expression on his face halfway between confusion and…something else.

But she’s not going to be making those comparisons, Rebecca reminds herself. Move forward, don’t look back.

Oh, this is _not_ going to be easy.

**Author's Note:**

> I love all different variations of R/N having met prior to the events of the series. The idea that led to this particular scenario was me thinking about how, if they slept together previously, it would not be the fact that they had sex that would be the source of any awkwardness. Both Rebecca and Nathaniel are comfortable with casual sex and a one night stand in law school is a pretty long time ago. But if they had had any expectations about what the other person took away from the encounter…and if the other person happened to behave differently….
> 
> Ergo, this fic.
> 
> Thank you all for reading and happy new year!


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